Fortune Brands Plans Move Of Headquarters To Lincolnshire

April 28, 1999|By Jon Bigness, Tribune Staff Writer.

Fortune Brands Inc., marketer of such well-known brands as Jim Beam bourbon, Titleist golf balls and clubs and Moen faucets, said Tuesday it will move its corporate headquarters to suburban Chicago as part of a broader restructuring plan.

The consumer-products company also plans to reduce by about one-third its staff of about 185 headquarters employees now based in Old Greenwich, Conn., before completing the move into its existing Lincolnshire facility by the end of 1999.

The moves will result in one-time charges of $60 million to $70 million during 1999, but will eventually save $25 million to $30 million a year, the company said.

Fortune Brands' decision to move to the Chicago area bucks a trend that has reshaped the city's business landscape. With 14 Fortune 500 headquarters, Chicago ranks a distant second to New York and one ahead of Houston. But after losing just one company last year--Amoco Corp.--more are about to leave, mostly because they have been purchased by out-of-town rivals.

The list of companies that have recently departed the Windy City, or plan to, includes Ameritech Corp., General Instrument Corp., Illinois Central Corp. and Morton International Inc. Others, including U.S. Robotics Corp. and Waste Management Inc., moved from the suburbs.

Chicago also lost out when Rockwell International Corp. chose Milwaukee as its new corporate roost after deciding to relocate from Southern California.

Last year, Bank One Corp. and Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. made Chicago their home after acquiring Chicago companies. But the last pure corporate relocation to Chicagoland was in 1997, when papermakers James River Corp. of Richmond, Va., and Fort Howard Corp. of Green Bay merged and moved to Deerfied under the name Fort James Corp.

Another company believed to be heading to Chicago or its suburbs is Freeport, Ill.-based Newell-Rubbermaid Inc.

Fortune Brands is moving here simply because operations that make up more than 80 percent of its sales and profits are already located here, said Norm Wesley, the company's president and chief operating officer. Its wine-and-spirits business operates from Deerfield and its home and office businesses are already in a 175,000-square-foot Lincolnshire facility. Its golf business is headquartered in Fairhaven, Mass.

"Our real decision was predicated on locating our business where our folks and business already are," said Wesley. "Our mix of business has changed over time and Chicago just makes more sense."

In 1994, Fortune Brands became one of the first major cigarette companies to exit the tobacco business, by selling its domestic tobacco operations.

Three years later, it spun off its Britain-based tobacco operations and changed its name from American Brands Inc.

It has also sold off its U.K.-based retailing business and domestic insurance business. In that time, Fortune Brands went from a $15 billion company to a $5 billion firm.

The company said in March it was considering laying off workers and moving its corporate headquarters.

The plans were announced even as the company boasted it would post "double-digit" earnings growth in 1999. The only alternative to relocating was moving into a smaller facility in Connecticut, Wesley said.